Why will Minister Novak give young scientists a million rubles?

As the competition arrangers told Construction.ru, representatives of scientific groups from Koroliov, Novosibirsk and Saint Petersburg will be handed a million rubles each to continue their research. The Minister of Energy of the RF and member of the Surveillance Council of the ‘Global energy’ award, Andrei Novak, will award the prizes.
The young scientists’ projects will help to solve the issues of obtaining biological fuel form the new generation, distant energy supplies for airborne vehicles and achieving a new level in Russian geological exploration. Scientists younger than 35 from 51 regions took part in the competition for grants. The winners were determined by the committee of the ‘Global energy’ international energy award.
A group of young scientists headed by Ivan Matsak achieved a 24 hour flight time increase for UAV without recharging. Before now, such vehicles could be used only for 25-30 minutes without recharging. The means of “distant charging” is rather simple: a small solar battery is fixed on the UAV, at which is aimed a laser beam from a distant point. The technology may also be used in robototronics and space exploration for charging nano- and micro-satellites.
Sergei Kashcheev and his team, from Saint-Petersburg, have developed a method of discovering oil and gas with the help of a super-powerful ‘laser pointer’. Laser sounding from an aircraft will help to find raw materials, to predict the oil and gas content of a field and to choose the best points for deep drilling.
The analysis of 1 m2 of land by the manual mode takes 3-5 days, but with the help of Kashcheev’s ‘laser pointer’, it will take less than 24 hours.
Alexei Bychkov and his colleagues from Novosibirsk have created a next- generation biological fuel consisting of carbs and lignin. The higher the content of the latter, the higher the burning temperature. Bychkov’s team has managed to increase the share of lignin by size degradation of the primary material. In the resulting substance, the percentage of lignin is 3.5 times higher, at 70%.
This technology means we can get fuel from fully restored primary material and solves important ecological problems. More than 270m tons of waste in crop husbandry and about 70m tons in wood processing are produced in Russia annually, but only about 1m tons are re-used.
To remind you, the ‘Youth energy’ All-Russia competition for the projects of young researchers in the sphere of energy has been held annually since 2004. 191 young scientists from 43 research centers have received grants during the past 11 years. The allotted financing totals 35.5m rubles. The awards ceremony for the winners of 2015 will take place in Gostiny Dvor in Moscow’s Amphitheater Hall.